In far less time than I thought, I am now the proud owner of a new Typhoon-Class Battleship in EVE Online. By 'owner', I mean it in the the 'worked hard, purchased and is now my property' sense, rather than the 'OMFGWTFBBQ!!!11!!' sense, of course. I say 'worked hard', but to be honest it didn't really seem to take that long, compared with some of the 'Grinding For Victory!' I've subjected myself to in the past in these strange little worlds. Maybe two weeks of reasonably dedicated haulage work, and a keen eye for market prices on the various types of Widget that the world of EVE need to run their lives. The activity itself was engaging and even fun at times, and I even found time to break off and do the odd Frigate-based Agent 1 ('Easy-mode') mission, just for variety.

The essential problem I have in pretty much all MMOs is one of motivation, and the more open-ended the game, the worse it gets. Trialling Shadowbane brought this home to me somewhat, but it's always been there in my gaming; 'Why am I here?'. I don't necessarily mean backstory, although having a reason for your character being there is helpfull too. No, I mean why am I, the player, there?

Most MMOs take the form of some large-scale abstract task, broken down in to many, many small and repetitive tasks; i.e Level 50, and Whacking Blue Con Monsters. It's a common pattern, but doesn't work very well with the usual model for a computer game, where the objective is to 'complete it'. MMO completion is not a realisitc propsition for any but the most dedicated, and I end up looking at the Points To Win, dividing Repetition, multiplying by Boredom and then taking away the number I first thought of, and coming up with Can't Be Bothered. I'm probably not alone in this shaky arithmetic.

So if not 'Win', then what? Clearly you have to set your own goals; things that will bring you satisfaction and pleasure, and yes, even 'closure', if that's what it takes. I tend to look at the whole of a MMO, decide what bits I like, and what bits I don't, then build my own 'win' around that. "See All The Lands", "Gain That Ability/Skill", "Buy One Of Each Widget", "Gain X Many Points", all self-imposed goals and motivations that usually fall far short of 'Gain Max Level', but are achieveable, given what I know about my own tolerances and attention spans.

And that's the important bit. Knowing that, by your own rules, there actually is a possibility of 'winning' can make all the difference, and I find a series of small and meaningful goals will keep me playing a MMO far longer than one mighty slog to some intangible and airy pinnacle. I wonder what most people do when the get to Level Max anyway? Start another character, this time with massive twinking? Just loaf about chatting and wearing impressive armour? Quit and sign up for the next grinder?

Anyway, 'Own a Battleship' was one of my EVE Goals, and now there's a danger I'll lose interest without it. 'Own one of each Battleship' ought to buy me a few more months though, and anyway, I have my new toy to play with at the moment.

Initial combat trials of the newly christened 'Ambivalence' proved to be very satisfying, with me steamrolling through the Agent 3 mission that previously so brutally kicked the ''Obsolescence' to bits, which just goes to show, bigger is better, and that payback is a bitch.

Now, about those Agent 4 missions...

The Ambivalence, as in 'You're going home in a f***ing Ambivalence...or, you might not be...I just don't care'. Minmatar ship design tends toward the "Fully Operational Battlestation" school of design, which I quite like.